Pictured here is a “rapid” popup testing center in Brooklyn. I joined the line at 8am, and was positioned 26th. By 9:45am, I was still 26th. By 9:50am, exactly one person had been tested, so I wished everyone the best of luck, and walked back home.
Using AI to Discern Cats from CDC Vaccination Cards
The NYC Covid Safe app can’t tell the difference between a valid CDC vaccination card and a picture of a cat. Doing this isn’t just possible, it’s pretty easy. With AI – using node.js, textract, and rekognition – in fewer than 300 lines of code.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 378: Fully Vaccinated against Corona
On Friday March 26, I received the second injection of the Pfizer vaccine at a Brooklyn health center on Clarkson Street. The appointment was automatically scheduled on the day of my first shot. There was just one complication: I didn’t bring my dumb card. And apparently, there is a black market for these things.
The Presumption of Savagery
The week after George Floyd was killed by a police officer, I was sitting on my stoop, chatting with my neighbor. She’s a retired FDNY ladder chief in her sixties. She grew up here in Bedstuy. Our homes share a party wall and fence line. Before the virus, when the weather was nice, I’d often see her carrying supplies back and forth from her house next door to her two other properties, less than a quarter mile away. She’s a grandmother, a home owner, a real estate investor, and restaurant owner. She is black. And she said something that day that took me by surprise.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 221
I’ve started reading a book which is rapidly dominating every moment of waking thought. It’s called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In a nutshell:
Stop saying yes to 99.99% of things you agree to
Be judicious about what you say yes to, but go all in
Design guardrails that insulate you from pointless/low-value work
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 218
For years, my bike-mounted coffee holder was a hair too big for my Kleen Kanteen. Today, I fixed that problem using some gymnastics tape I had upstairs. As is almost always the case, a low tech no-frills solution worked. My dad would be proud.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 148
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 145
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 139
It’s been 139 days since the official start of New York City's covid-19 lockdown. Unlike a lot of people, I have access to a Crossfit Rig in my back yard. About a week ago, I started making it a point to track some of my foundational strength benchmarks – rope climbing, muscle-ups, and pullups. The last 2 were for the orphans and BLM.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 21: 3.5 hour Grocery Store Line
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 14: Gratitude
I don’t think being grateful is one of the default configurations of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It has to be activated somehow — compelled. Some people are compelled more intensely, and with greater frequency than others: refugees, combat veterans, cancer survivors. Those of us who habitually experience low levels of suffering meander through life with the default configuration, getting by with a game plan that takes us from point a to point b along a path of least resistance. But occasionally, people in this category (habitual non-sufferers) bang up against a moment of real suffering — and not of the lowercase ‘s’ variety such as getting stuck with the middle seat on a flight from JFK to LAX. I’m talking about discovering that your daughter has just been shot, or that your family’s apartment building is about to receive incoming artillery.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 11: The Occasional Need for Futile and Stupid Gestures
If you occasionally go balls-to-the-wall full re*ard in situations, on the simple grounds of staunching the flow of rampant douchebaggery — this is OK. It is proof that you’re one of the good ones who carry the fire.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 10: Scary Movies as Barometers
Nowadays, on any given week day, all of New York f***ing city basically looks like it is being staged for a film shoot. The entire status of the city can thus, be summarized by a movie title — perhaps, if we all agreed to use this simplified scheme, the CDC could successfully communicate the sense of urgency to the rest of the fucking country, who are apparently receiving dipshit lessons from the residents of Florida and Kentucky.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 9: Aqua Best
I decide to drive into the city on Tuesday around 5pm — almost on a whim. I head over the Manhattan bridge, take a right on Grand after passing the playground on Chrystie. All up and down Chrystie Street and Forsyth - and even along Grand - there are parking spots all over the place. Plastic bags and scraps of paper dart through the air, held up by wind that is unencumbered. On a normal Tuesday, those bags would be trampled down, kicked aside, swept away, somehow kept in check by one of several possible factors: delivery trucks, fire engines, cop cars, people exiting or entering cars, cabbies pulling into the cab stand, bus drivers, pedestrians, little old ladies with laundry baskets, bikers, men on trikes loaded up with tools, well dressed women pushing a $1,500 heavy duty stroller. Today, all such factors are gone.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 8: A Metamorphosis of Concern
Since 2006, I have jotted down interesting things in Evernote that I felt might one day be useful to know or interesting to discuss with my daughters. Things such as book lists, odd jobs I have had, places to visit, beautiful college libraries, etc.
One such list I find very instructive is a recurring one titled: Things I am preoccupied with. This list, much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, behaves as a basic barometer — a timestamped indicator of the degree to which my own head is shoved up my own ass. Below is a comparison of two lists: one collected today; the other from a time that is pre-covid 19.
Corona Virus Dispatch from NYC, Day 7: Online School
School has been out for a full week - since Monday, March 16. To be honest, I decided on Friday afternoon to keep my kids home regardless of any official announcement. As many New Yorkers may remember, Friday the 13th was the pivotal turning point for the mayor and for the DOE because that was when Healthcare Workers union 1199 SEIU joined forces with parents and the United Federation of Teachers, and officially endorsed the view that closing all NYC public schools was a responsible public health move. It wasn’t until Sunday night that the mayor made it official.